


small hands

by TheOriginalSuki



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Deleted Scenes, Drabbles, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-06-27 20:34:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19797289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOriginalSuki/pseuds/TheOriginalSuki
Summary: "nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands" -- e.e. cummingsJonsa drabbles.





	1. The Long Goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A deleted scene.

It is all Jon can do not to bash his head against the stone wall just to feel something. For weeks he's been confined to the small crowded space, separated from light and air, bundled away like the boxes of irrelevances stored there with him. He thinks, _they have forgotten me_. _I've been left here to rot_.

He doesn't find he has much of a reaction to that either.

Now Tyrion comes and tells him they have decided his fate: he is neither to live nor die, which is funny because Jon has never been particularly skilled at either. He will be banished to the Wall and serve out a life sentence, queenslayer and erstwhile Targaryen.

Tyrion leaves. Almost as soon as he does, the jangling of keys returns and the door opens. Perhaps Tyrion has forgotten something. But the one who steps in is the last person Jon expects to see in King's Landing. Enclosed in black leather and chain, austere and battle-ready, stands Sansa. She wears her grim lady's face while she stands aside, and some men bring in a shallow tub and several buckets of steaming water. She keeps her eyes downcast as they fill the tub, one by one, and file out. The door closes with cruel finality. Then Sansa lifts her eyes, slowly.

Her face is anything but hard.

He is ashamed. He fumbles to stand, but she is before him kneeling, hands framing his face, looking him over, as if to make sure he isn't broken. Well. Not the kind of damage that can be seen. Then she lowers his head onto her chest and his eyes sink closed instantly. He dreamt of this, as s a little boy. It is what what a mother would do. He settles his head and lets the tears seep out without a sound.

She doesn't rush him. When he's ready, she helps him up and to the tub and begins to undress him. Once more, he feels a twinge of shame, but under her steady and comforting guidance, he falls into submission. She strips the filthy clothing off his body and holds his arm to balance him as he steps into the small tub. It is not much more than an oversized barrel. As he soaks, she lifts the chain from around her neck; unfastens her leather armour; loosens the ties to the thick black overdress and removes it. The woollen shift underneath is matted and clings to her skin. It is accustomed to northern climes, but Sansa will no longer go without layers: each one is a wall of protection against the eyes of ruthless men. But in the close, sad room, with only a bastard for company, she feels safe enough,

Sansa cups the warm water and pours it over his head and chest. She uses a cloth and crude soap to buff the dirt and blood from his skin. She spares no inch of him. He finds this time that he is not ashamed. When she finishes washing him, she combs his hair, his beard, and takes a pair of shears to them, trimming and clipping. He is resigned to her touch. He has not felt tenderness like this in a lifetime.

She helps Jon out of the tub and wraps a length of linen around him, over his shoulders, making him a shroud of himself. She is tall, always has been, but their level eyes somehow reinforce this balance between them. When she takes care of him, she does not make him feel less. And when he lets her serve him, he does not imagine he is her better.

She unpacks the clothes she has brought for him and helps him dress. They are clearly made by her own hand, and Jon knows that she has made them long before; she would not have had the time or stability to sew on her long ride south. She replaces her own clothing. When they are mostly dressed, she sits him down in the corner once more. There is no pallet, no pillow, no blanket even; the linen is limp and damp. So she directs him to put his head in her lap, and he needs no cajoling. She traces his ear, runs her fingernails along the back of his neck, pets him. This is a deliberate charm to put him to sleep, and it does.

Jon wakes to the pitiless moan of the opening door. It has darkened since he left the world of wakefulness, but a harsh light falls into the room from without. He turns his head, still in Sansa's lap, like a common sleeper that can't be bothered by morning. But the light remains, as does the presence of the one holding the lantern, hostile and insistent. Sansa lifts his head from off her lap, and everything in him groans for the loss.

Sansa is rising to stand and Jon's fingers trail in her skirt but he can't bring himself to clasp her around the legs, though he wants to so very much. She leans over him where he sits, a discarded heap on the floor, and brushes her lips to his forehead. 

He is a letter she is setting her seal upon. She has written her love onto him with this last exchange, and she never even spoke a word.

He can see the threat of tears dancing in her eyes as she pulls away, her face pinched with the effort of holding them in. He wishes he could offer her some comfort, some brave word, but really, she makes her own courage.

He will not see her again until they stand on the docks with their brother and sister. They will speak, but their words will be nothing but a postscript -- the conclusion to their long goodbye.


	2. Seen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another deleted scene.

The night before Jon leaves for Dragonstone, he cannot sleep. He sits up at the narrow table in candlelight, pouring over maps, the curling edges of parchment weighed down by dragon glass. It is a foolish risk to go south; and yet the danger at the door to the north drives him to it. Every moment he hesitates is another step closed between living and dead.

A knock sounds on the door, quiet but unmistakable. Before he can answer, it opens, and Sansa appears, carrying a platter with a slice of bread and some salted ham. She is dressed ready for bed, wrapped in a robe with her hair falling around her. It is strange seeing her undone, and oddly intimate. He knows she does not bring herself thusly before just anyone. She approaches and sets the plate down on the surface in front of him.

"To help you sleep," she says.

He doesn't know how she could have known, nor how to say thank you without it ringing false.

Sansa lowers herself before his chair, and the shadows dance away from her gilded hair. She stares at him, intently, studying.

His voice creaks. "What are you doing?"

"Looking at you. I don't think I've ever done it properly before."

That is unexpected. He narrows his eyes trying to make sense of it, even as she reaches up to angle his chin downward.

"I took you for granted all those many years, before we parted. Then, when I was alone and frightened, with only the memory of my loves to warm me, I couldn't call you up; not like the others. I thought, _how sweet it would be_ ... to see you again."

He can do nothing but submit under the heat of her stare. She seems to be taking him in, reading him like a page, memorising. He thinks he can feel the touch of her fingers over his long and ugly scar; but no, it is only the trail of her eyes.

"I was taught to look through you, Jon, and I'm sorry."

"You were a child," he whispers.

"So were you." Her look is pained.

"I'll come back," he says, though even he has trouble believing it.

She leans away from him a bit, appraising. Seems to take this in, and nods; though she looks less convinced that he feels. She starts to rise, and he has the sudden instinct to ask her for a favour; like a knight in a song, something of hers to take into battle with him. And he thinks, _I would like a single lock of her red hair_.

But the moment passes, and she moves away across the room, and out the door. When he at last closes his eyes to rest, he sees her face, earnest and open, looking into him, seeing, and he falls into a deep slumber.


	3. The Unicorn and the Maiden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here there be unicorns. Written for @Jonsa-Creatives picture prompt on tumblr.

When Sansa was a child, she and Jeyne eschewed spinning one warm day to dart into the wolf's wood. It was easy enough to get away. Everyone was always busy, and the girls had learned how to spin from a young age, so that they could walk and spin at the same time -- pinching and pulling the wool tucked into their belts, dropping the spindle and letting the thread materialise, as if by magic.

The boys noticed them. They'd been playing in the sparring yard, and Theon, ever up to mischief, goaded Jon and Robb into following. They kept a safe distance, but the girls, with their heads bent and their hands busy, didn't notice their stalkers. When they came to a clearing in the wood, they settled down. Sansa sat in the moss, and Jeyne fussed over her friend's skirts. She arranged Sansa's red braids like two cords around her face.

"What in the world are they doing?" Theon asked, his voice a sneer.

Robb and Jon peered from behind a shelter of leaves, as Jeyne took the spindle from Sansa and scuttled off in the opposite direction of them, ducking her body behind a tree.

Sansa strained her neck to follow Jeyne's flight, but the other girl shooed her glance with an exaggerated gesture.

Robb and Theon snickered.

Jon watched the sister-girl in her pale blue, looking around her with apprehension. He was reminded of when she directed him and Robb to play knights in the godswood, but there was an earnestness in her wide open eyes that he'd not seen before. She began to sing.

Understanding opened from within; he said, "She's trying to lure a unicorn."

Theon, for once, was a blank. And Robb slid his eyes from Jon to his little sister in the dancing sylvan light.

"You know," Jon said, voice low. "To catch a unicorn? It takes a pure maiden; she must be alone. If she is worthy, the unicorn will come and lie his head in her lap."

Robb raised an eyebrow, but Theon rolled his eyes. "I'm going to play a trick on her!" He darted from behind the foliage before Jon or Robb could stop him.

Theon did not reveal himself right away. He crept closer, from bush to shrub to bracken, and as he crept, he became possessed of a wicked idea. Jon could read it on his face like a rune. Theon started to rustle the bushes, first so soft as to be a sigh of wind. He put his foot into the earth and dragged, imitating the careful step of a wild thing; now moved the foliage a bit harder.

Sansa stopped singing. Her mouth clamped shut; her blue eyes tracked to the source of the noise.

This was cruel. Without thought, Jon stepped out into view, on the edge of the clearing. "Sansa."

Her eyes darted to him. She remained very still. They looked at each other for a closed eternity, the wider world forgotten.

Behind her, Theon roared and stumbled through the undergrowth, breaking the spell. "Snow! You ruined it!"

Sansa twirled around toward Theon, her round face flooding red.

Jeyne stomped from behind her tree trunk, and Robb emerged as well. "What are you idiots doing?" Jeyne demanded.

"You think you're going to catch a unicorn?" 

Jeyne blushed under Robb's gentle and amused smile.

Sansa floundered for an answer. "It -- what -- how?"

"Unicorns are all gone," Theon said. "Like dragons. And direwolves."

"They aren't, though!" Jeyne said. "Earlier today we had lessons, and Septa Mordane told us about Skagos."

"Skagos?"

"They trade in unicorn horns," Robb supplied helpfully.

"Well surely she didn't tell you that you could come catch one in the woods just by singing and looking pretty?"

"No, that was --" Jeyne looked down. Suddenly, the dirt at her feet became very absorbing.

"That's the way it's done in songs," Sansa said.

A silence followed, during which every insect, every creak of wind, every minute growth of root and leaf and limb resounded in the ears like screams.

Then Theon burst into laughter. And Sansa burst into tears.

Sansa hobbled up, trying to dart away, but tripped on her skirts. She had to brace herself in a clot of mud, which spattered all over the pale blue frock. She got up again and ran. Jeyne threw daggers with her eyes, before starting after her.

Robb began to reign in Theon, but Jon didn't hang about. He followed the two girls out of the wood and to the gate of Winterfell, not knowing what he would do. Just outside he caught sight of Jeyne and Sansa; the former comforting the latter, whose face was blotchy with mud and tears. Sansa, who faced his direction, recoiled at the sight of him.

"What do you want?" she asked, sullen.

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Her eyes clouded over with distance and disappointment. Someone stepped around the frame of the open gate. Lady Catelyn, with her high, chiselled cheeks and her auburn hair.

"Sansa -- what?" She looked at Jon and her eyes darkened, just as Sansa's had. "What have _you_ done now?" her tone of voice, enough to address him without using his name.

"It was my fault, my lady," Jon heard the words come out of him. "I lured them out here, I shouldn't have done so."

Catelyn's lips pressed into a line, her only acknowledgement, and a practised one at that. How little she thought of him, that she accepted his confession without question.

Sansa looked at him, though, and the quality of the clouds in her eyes shifted. It lightened her imperceptibly, like dawn just over the horizon, as her mother ushered her and Jeyne back into the safety of the keep. Jon would be punished tonight, no doubt, but he took a small comfort in the fact that he had changed the colour of Sansa's eyes.

***

It is summer, warm, as it had been all those years ago. Sansa announces she will go out to the wolf's wood, alone. He is king now, of no mere seven kingdoms, and still she does as she pleases. Jon gives her a head start before following her out. She is more than likely perfectly safe, but the memories of war are raw with him, and he worries.

When he sees her, he is transported. She sits beneath a tree dressed in pale grey, with her skirts tossed like foam around her. Her hair is not braided like a child's any more, but it parts over her shoulders; and the radiance of the living wood reflects youth in her, like light upon the water. Jon doesn't know what moves him now, if it is the same thing that moved him that day many years gone, but he steps forward, smoothly, so as not to startle.

She looks up; her brief alarm dissolves into a smile. He approaches, and her lap is too open, too inviting. When he lowers himself onto the sinking earth, and puts his head into it, she adjusts, accommodating him. From the shelter of her lap he can see light showering down on her, engulfing her flaming hair from behind in a halo. She leans over and places a myriad of soft, soft kisses to his mouth: over and over, and he is content to resign himself to her attentions -- to let this creature come to him. 

In the warm green haze, it is impossible to tell which is the unicorn and which the maiden.


	4. Heat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A/U where the sensible thing happens and Jon is made king.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rated M for sexual content.

The South was hot. It was the first and last thing one noticed. When waking at fist light, the humidity already present made the night-cool sheets damp to the touch. Come evening, the condensation on skin ran alternately hot and cool, but always close. Falling asleep was no easy thing.

Sansa did not like the heat. There was a time she thought the heat a luxury; the idea of Dorne in the summer was an exotic fancy. But being a prisoner in a place sours a person, and Sansa no longer cared for the South, not one whit; not it's customs nor its foods nor its fancy dress. That summer, King's Landing blazed with cloudless neon skies. Sansa wore her dresses with the collars cut high to the neck. And oh, she was hot. Yet she would not leave, not as long as Jon was there.

When they'd made him king, she sent Bran and Arya north in her place, and she remained.

Now, a season on past spring, well into the summer, no small progress had been made to restore King's Landing -- perhaps not to its former glory, but at least to a place where people could scrape by again. Much of the population had been slaughtered in the dragon siege. But life is both tenuous and resilient. Those that remained slowly gathered themselves back up into a semblance of living -- eating, working, laughing, marrying and giving in marriage. Children were born. New opportunities for construction and infrastructure overhaul brought people from all corners of Westeros, hopeful to make a living and a fresh start. Returning balance to the Seven Kingdoms was slow-going. But it was going. Though the North, among others, groused about subjugation to the southern crown once more, and there was talk about independence. Only they were at a bit of a loss now that their self-chosen king ruled the greater realm. Bran remained listless, and Arya was preparing to set sail west. Sansa, the Lady of Winterfell, was a natural choice for successor; but she was and had been King Jon's greatest supporter.

Acceptance of Jon's rule did not glide down the throats of all, but his claim to the Iron Throne could hardly be denied. Aegon Targaryen was the king of prophecy, the grandchild of the eldest son of the Mad King. Jon had Ser Davos, Sam Tarly, and even Tyrion to help him navigate the nuances of a foreign land, but he himself was no simpleton. Growing up a bastard made him careful and canny; he had been a solid leader during his time as Commander of the Night's Watch, and the lesson of pleasing some of the people some of the time, and all of the people never, was hard-won; it stood out in ugly scars on his chest. He thought arduously about how to implement policy going forward. This came as a surprise to some of the more sheltered nobles, who didn't think a bastard could be good at anything other than fighting. Part of Jon's cleverness was in keeping people around who aligned with his views and would look after his benefit. And though he'd never specifically asked Sansa to stay, he hadn't questioned her moving herself into residence in the Red Keep, either. 

As such, Lady Sansa Stark once more became a feature of the landscape of King's Landing. Like Queen Margaery before her, she was active in almsgiving and serving the poor. She intervened in matters that could have easily declined into bloodshed. She was not too good for the common folk, and those who had survived long enough, remembered how she had tempered King Joffrey's worst impulses -- until she couldn't any more. The name for her trickled down from the north: the Red Wolf. The woman who guarded the Last Dragon. And she was not just good. She was crafty. In practice, Jon did not have a Master of Whispers, but whatever role such a one would have filled was taken partly by Sansa. She made it her business to know what was going on and how. Neither did the king look askance at any counsel she gave him. She was not on the Small Council, but she knew the mind of the king as well as any of them.

More than just a political asset for King Aegon, Lady Stark was a practical as well. She slipped into the vacancy of running the household left by a wifeless monarch. She filled the role even as she had when he was but king in the North. She knew the king's whims, his likes and distastes. She could get through to him where the pretty speeches and silver tongues failed. (Though officially, she never went against him.) And every night, after the servants made their rounds through the castle to shut it down, she went into the king's chambers and opened back up the windows, to move the breathing air in and the stuffy heat out.

Jon never considered the fact that his room was always cool and dark when he came in after a long day in the oppressive heat. He was aware of it subconsciously, as he wouldn't have been able to sleep and settle otherwise. But he didn't know it was her, had always been her, until he walked in on her one night, throwing open the shutters.

He halted; closed the door slowly; looked at her. She remained distracted with her task, and he waited, watching, as she finished.

"Going to bed, then?" she said, moving away from the windows toward him. "I'm done now; sleep well."

He pivoted, following her route to the door and said, "What are you ...?"

She turned around, her manner open and receptive.

Comprehension bloomed in his face like a flower. "You come in and open the windows every night."

A corner of her mouth flicked upward. She closed her eyes in a nod.

He moved toward her, swiftly, and enclosed her in a tight embrace.

Sansa startled, holding her arms out at awkward angles. Then she folded them around him.

"It's so bloody hot here." Jon spoke into her shoulder. It rushed out like an exhale; he felt relief just to say it out loud.

She laughed. "I know."

He lifted his head from her shoulder but spoke over it, still holding her. "You don't have to stay here, you know. You can go back home. To Winterfell."

Sansa half wished he would let go. She told herself, _his closeness exacerbates the heat_. "Do you want me to go?"

"No, it's just that ... I know you never wanted to come back to King's Landing. Ever. After everything you've been through. And yet here you are."

"I'll not leave, Jon, as long as you'll have me," she said steadily.

"I would have you," he said quietly. The timbre of his voice resonated up her spine, raising fine hairs on the back of her neck.

As he pulled away, his look bored into her, unmistakable. She'd seen it before, in men, for her: not least of all, Tyrion and Littlefinger. It was a novelty on Jon but it didn't frighten her, not quite. She could see him shoving it down, swallowing it back, even as it flashed in the recesses of his face.

The moment balanced precariously on an invisible ledge; it could tilt one way or the other. And he looked at her with dark, wide-open eyes, like a frightened animal. Baring himself to rejection. She knew he was asking -- he wouldn't touch her if she didn't want him to. She couldn't bring her mind to the place where that kind of intimacy made sense. But what she did know, in that moment, a truth as terrible as dragons, was that she would give him whatever he wanted. She wouldn't deny him.

She gave the faintest of nods. And then his mouth landed on hers, devouring, like a man starved.

He took her in a weave of limbs and sweat, on top of the silks and covers; aggressive, desperate. The heat generated between them was unbearable, but his drive overcame nature. Sansa felt moments of trepidation -- she knew she could pull away, tell him to stop, and he would. But she wanted to give him this. She had never been able to give herself freely before. In the past, it had always been taken from her -- by a lustful glance, a chaste kiss, even her maidenhood stolen on the marriage bed. Here at last the power lay with her, the choice to give herself freely and wholly.

And it was not painful. It was rather pleasant. She imagined, over time, as she thawed and her memories retreated, he could strum her traumatised body into wakening from self-induced slumber. But they had no way of knowing if there would be another time. All they had was now. And so, his want of her was focused, almost mercenary. At the height of his act, she marvelled at him, at what she could do to him. That she could turn this guarded wolf into a shattered thing, vulnerable and laid bare. His trust in her moved her. It made the sound and smell and feel of him all the more precious. When he finished, he rolled off her, gasping, exposing their bare bodies to the night air. His fingers sought hers at his side; he held her hand while they drifted off to sleep, the sweat cooling on their skin.

Later, he would wake her from between her legs, pulling them down in a v around him; saying, "I want you again." And Sansa sighed, the back of her hand to her cheek, and nodded, tired but content. He would embrace her four more times, before light seamed the horizon.


	5. Jon Is Jon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yet another deleted scene. Jon tells Arya and Sansa his secret.

"Tell them," Jon said.

Sansa and Arya turned as one to Bran -- the solemn face, benevolent and apathetic as a carved weirwood's. 

"Jon is not our father's bastard. He is the trueborn son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen, and the rightful heir to the Iron Throne, Aegon Targaryen."

It was death-quiet. Jon could hear all, all the things that go on in and over a man when he stops hearing himself breathe: the snow-swollen clouds sweeping by, the roots grasping the frozen earth beneath them. He counted the seconds before Arya and Sansa turned to look back at him; shock plain on their faces.

Then Arya punched him. Hard. In the arm. Jon choked out a protest.

"Fucking idiot. If I'm not going to call you my half-brother, but brother -- what makes you think I'd consider you anything else? This doesn't mean anything. Not to me."

Jon felt his internal knots work loose under her lopsided smile. But then he looked at Sansa. Her eyes were not on him. He knew her mind was working, putting together scraps of information, calculations, and bodies. He pleaded wordlessly for her not to touch all that, not now, not in this moment, and he swallowed hard, waiting for her answer.

"Sansa ... say something, please. How do you feel?"

Her eyebrows dipped low; her mouth turned in a sad smile. "Arya's right. You're the same person you were two days, two minutes, two seconds ago. It doesn't matter how I feel ... How do _you_ feel, Jon?"

And a roar like wind filled the space between his ears; he felt as though he were falling backwards, with nothing to steady him. 

"I don't -- I don't know--" 

His voice broke, deep and jagged. _He_ broke; he bent in half toward her and she stepped forward to catch him, his face collapsing under the weight of withheld sobs. He gripped her tight, holding on for his life; and for once, in his long, lonely, pathetic living-and-dying, he allowed someone to comfort him.

Sansa held him for what felt like a moment and a year. Then he dropped his left arm, opened it toward Arya, and pulled her in, a willing addition to their sloppy embrace. The three of them stood together, a cluster of mushrooms, stark against the snowy white: outwardly separate, but underneath, inexorably and mysteriously connected.

Bran watched with the trace of a smile.


	6. Heat II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 2.

The heat woke Sansa, gradually. She felt it as a suffocation on her skin. Even the morning dew lost its freshness under the pitiless southern sun. She stirred, and froze. Then she remembered where she was. What had happened. It came to her in snatches. Jon rocking into her, Jon hungrily grasping. Sweat mingling sweetly with the perfumed flowers of King's Landing. His breath in her ear, at her throat, on her thigh ...

She sat up, shuddering, letting the thin sheet fall to her waist. Only to pull it back in belated modesty when she saw Jon sitting in an armchair not far off. He had washed and groomed and was pulling on a linen shirt. He'd shut the east-facing lattice windows to shield from the sun. Sansa felt the unpleasant fugue of a poor night's sleep behind her eyes.

Jon noticed her, seemed to read her discomfort. Said, "You don't have to get up."

Sansa shifted and eyed the door. "Servants will come in at any minute, I -- shouldn't be here."

Jon leaned back into the chair, using the armrests. He regarded her with half-lidded eyes. She couldn't read him. His chest rose and sunk, up and down, with his breathing.

"Sansa. I think you should go back North, to Winterfell."

Her mouth went dry. She didn't move but every muscle in her strained. She whispered, "What?"

He tilted his head down and away. "It's not right for me to keep you here. You'll not thrive. I can see it now. I mean, how long do you imagine being in this place -- away from the godswood, and the crypts and snow, and the wide open spaces -- you'll dry out and shrivel up; you'll choke on the memories, not now, but one day, one day it'll be too much. I couldn't be responsible for that, I won't be." He spared a hesitant glance to her bare skin, the network of scarring.

Sansa took a narrow breath in through her nose, felt a sharp pain there. "Is that so? Tell me, Your Grace, is it that I've outstayed my usefulness -- or perhaps the fact that I've satisfied a king's fickle cravings -- that brings on this sudden clarity?"

He looked at her from beneath his slanted brow. His voice warned. "That's not what I mean."

"Then _what do_ _you_ mean?"

"I care for you."

"You care for me, you use me."

"That's not what this was, Sansa, and you know it."

"Do I?"

He leaned forward in the chair; rested his elbows on his knees and his his face in his hands. "I won't have you suffer for me."

"That's not for you to decide!"

He dove from his chair. Fear curled in her belly, but he held her face in an iron grip. Close. So close. "You're not happy here, Sansa. You never were. I need you to live, and live well. I need -- I -- love you, I --"

She stared him down, eyes itching from lack of moisture. She worked her arms in between his and placed her palms over his hands. "I'm so glad you waited 'til after you fucked me to tell me that." And she broke his grasp with a sweep of her arms; stood, clutching the linen sheet to her body; and exited the chamber at a run, into the sweltering heat.

***

The heat of King's Landing stayed with Sansa long after. Far up the King's Road. It followed her into the Neck, past Greywater Watch and Moat Cailin. It suffocated and burned and made it so hard to breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be a part 3.


	7. The Favour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before Jon leaves for King's Landing to fight Dany's war. Another missing scene.

Sansa can't bring herself to stand in the courtyard and wait for Jon to leave her again. 

She is weary to the core. Of war. Of goodbyes. Of being left behind by people she loves. (Father, Mother, Robb, Rickon, Theon. Lady's ghost leading the way for their morbid party. Even Arya says she will go, and just like that -- a limb you don't realise is essential until its lost.) So Sansa hides away in the broken tower. She faces the southern window, watching the horizon for the encroachment of a place that has taken so much from her. She fears the South, fears it will rear up and swallow the North, a rapacious beast. She will keep the North safe. At all costs.

There is a scuffle and a groan, and Ghost lumbers through the doorway. He is not alone. He has brought Jon.

Sansa cools. Even with her insides scorched from so many lifetimes of sorrow, and now this -- this final and devastating loss -- she must stay glacial. Keep the fever down. If she allows herself too much warmth, it could flare up and kill her.

Jon steps into the room, over the rubble and rotten timbre. He is dressed in plain armour and clothing -- no sigil or colors identify him, neither Stark nor Targaryen. He is Daenerys' now, the blood price paid for dragons. Death will have its pound of flesh. He shifts his weight. He grips his sword.

"Well?" His voice creaks, an abandoned thing.

She stares him down.

"What? No words of comfort to offer a man departing to his death?"

A sullen laugh escapes. "How about these: _don't go_." 

_(Don't go, you idiot.)_

He looks back at her, his face a solemn blank, and says nothing.

Ghost jostles his shoulders and shakes out his fur. They look at him simultaneously. The direwolf sits and stills. Flicks his ears and waits. As though he is conscious of his role in bringing them together, and would see it through.

Sansa sighs a sigh as though she has not slept in a hundred years; tries again: "Don't die."

Now it is Jon's turn to laugh, a sound like stone on flint. "I can't make any promises."

"No, I suppose not. You promised you'd always protect me, and -- well. You can't keep that promise if you're dead, can you?" It isn't fair, she knows. But she can't help but try to hurt him. The desperate attempt of a scorned child, made with barbed and biting words, instead of threats and tears.

She is sorry as soon as she says it. Sansa can see his spirit sink and wither, through the windows of his eyes -- always the most expressive part of him, when his lips hardly twitch to smile, and his posture slumps earthward.

She is an utter wretch. Even Theon got something from her. A wolf broach and some broken tears, when his body departed on the funeral pyre. But she is so used to hurting now: to being hurt. It is all she has known for so long, it is all she knows how to do. But look at the man before her. He is not an enemy. He is a pawn of fate, same as herself. Trying to make some semblance of shelter out of the wreckage, a castle of snow.

Sansa takes a step toward him. "I cannot offer you any comfort. I have no comfort left to give, but. I will tell you this. I will follow you, into the very jaws of death if need be -- rip you back from the brink of the abyss, and not with the gentle touch of a fire priestess -- to assure that you return to me ... Do you understand?"

His throat flashes. He inhales shakily. Nods.

Sansa feels fire in her. She feels ice.

Jon's look penetrates; he says, "I would have a favour, my Lady. Your favour, to carry with me into the heart of battle."

Sansa tilts her head, unsure, even as he moves toward her; cups the back of her head with one hand, the small of her back with the other. His puts his mouth on hers, still and hard, and it is only then that she understands.


	8. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rated M for sexual content. Jon has a pregnancy "kink." Except it's only for his wife.

Jon is an irredeemable and utter libertine.

There is no other way around it -- the voracious and endemic appetite for his very pregnant wife. 

Sansa, who has never been a waif, now round as a plum on twiggy legs. She moves like a heavenly body. Circular, ponderous. She puffs up and down the narrow stairs; she is not long from confinement. And Jon, for his part, can't keep his hands off of her.

When they hold court in the hall of lords; when they walk, furred, on the battlements; sit side by side during meals. Jon finds ways to caress her: a splayed hand to her belly, a palm to the small of her back. He strokes her knee under the table. When he nuzzles her shoulder, she looks at him, her mouth puckered in an _o_. But her eyes are full of reassurance.

There is something irresistible to her craft -- germinating before him in the warm and dark and yet unseen, a mystery to which he is not initiated. 

The child is a secret kept from him. Shielded from the outer world by her body. For this, Jon does not begrudge them. It softens him, like clay in the sun. It is his opportunity for a show of faith. He cannot know the child, not the way she does. And all she need to do is allow her body to breath as it always has; she works the spell in her sleep! 

There is no doubt, for the woman's part, who the mother of a child is. But it is a beautiful kind of resignation, to trust that the child is his. Perhaps this is why he seeks to claim her, in public, in front of her lords and servants and the entire world. _Mine_. _My two_.

But in private, his claim is yet more feral. He will meet her in passing and an impulse will overtake him, to duck her into the nearest abandoned alcove or hall or chamber, to clutch her to him and set his mouth to hers like a starving man. She doesn't seem to mind. Sometimes, she even lets him spin her round and embrace her from behind. Quietly, now. Not that she doesn't breathe his name like a prayer.

And in the evenings she is tired; her legs swollen; her back sore. So he sits in the large and cushioned chair and takes her in his arms, nesting like the bowls of two spoons; cradling her, cradling her belly from above and below, moving inside her even as their child does; his chin resting on her shoulder. If he puts his tongue to her pulse, he can make her moan. What a potent aphrodisiac!

If he is too rough with her, she admonishes him, with a squeeze to his arm or a bite to his knuckle; and he eases up, and reigns himself in. But oh, he has never felt so close -- closer than when they meet like this -- and in their meeting a human life takes shape.


End file.
